The gateway cities in the polycentric network of mediterranean urban places

The paper aims at figuring out the globalization era effects on urban systems belonging todifficult contexts as the Southern Italy. In particular, the paper intends to defines a new urbanorder trough the gateway city explanations in terms of urban creativity for the south. Thegateway city rationale consists to connect the urban dimension contained by the Communitypolicies for the period 2007-2013 with planning functional nodes of the polycentric networkof Mediterranean urban places. The regions characterized by development breakdown andstructural lack can test competitiveness by city planning and city design according topolycentric principles of ESDP and project actions declined by ESPON on urban-ruralperspectives (ATLAS 2006). Moreover, these regions can planning competitiveness bystressing urban identity and extending it to future scenarios within a new framework of urbansystems. To make it be realized it is necessary to modelling a set of competitivenessindicators that can be suitable to the city system of southern Italy and apt to transform it in asystem of gateway cities and hub cities.